A nitpick. They didn't ask for editorial control; they asked for observance of the Terms of Service, with the option on their side to discontinue service. Nothing in the ToS gives DigitalOcean any right to editorial control and nothing in their communications says "give us control".

It's a binary proposition. Stick to the agreement, or the agreement is off.

They asked for a specific change: the removal of the name. That seems like editorial control to me. They took the view that anything embarrassing (even if not private) about someone who is not a public figure cannot be hosted on their servers. That is an editorial policy and they are asserting editorial control.

It isn't completely clear to me that he was breaching the terms. The closest part of the quoted terms is "harrass and embarrass". If it was an "or" then he would have breached them as an "and" I don't think he has unless there is further unrevealed harassment.

Regardless of whether it qualifies I would have expected the clause mostly to be used for serious harassment and/or posting nude images of people rather than accurately quoting statements that they have made recently.

I also note that asking for particular changes was a mistake. They should have stuck with "take it down or we will take it down", to avoid people making the argument you just made.

If only because being seen to exercise editorial control might introduce significant new legal risks that the ToS, and its policing, is presumably meant to avoid in the first place.

I don't like the article and if I was editing a paper or a website I would not publish the article in that form but DO is not a publisher but an infrastructure provider and for something that is not clearly illegal it seems highly inappropriate.

However they have guaranteed that I would not use them for any public facing service or content by stepping in this way (I might consider them for testing, internal or pure compute workloads).

The thing in this which really irks me is that the staff were neither co-operative nor reasonable. If you're a paying customer, the least they could do is put the complaint into a state of investigation whilst they looked into the claim. Instant ultimatum seems a bit steep.

I use Digital Ocean and like the service, but I really disagree with how they've handled this. I'm sure I won't be the only one moving providers this weekend.

For example. Suppose instead that DigitalOcean staff wanted him to write about penguins. If they said "write more about flightless antarctic birds or we will pull the plug", they would be trying to exercise editorial control, because they'd be making positive assertions about the content of the site. And, because they had no previous agreement in place to give them editorial control, they could be rightly told to sit and spin.

But that is not the situation. They have a ToS which forbids certain kinds of content and they are within their rights to terminate service entirely if the terms aren't adhered to by the customer. What they can't do is directly edit, or expect to directly edit, or otherwise direct the content.

When I studied law I learnt that different things, even when they lead to identical outcomes, are different, and should be dealt with independently.

If they made a mistake, it was in trying to be friendly about it, which gave a misleading impression. Sometimes legally-worded requests are best.

No, their mistake was being lazy. They did not effectively explain their application of the terms of service and how, specifically, his post violated those terms until far too late in the process. [1]

At first all he got was "your post violates section 2.8: harassment, defamatory content, etc.". If just anyone can claim harassment and have a blog shut down for any reason with no review that would be a serious issue for customers that wanted to host content on Digital Ocean. He said "please explain how this violates your terms of service" and it wasn't until several mails later in the exchange that he finally got a barely adequate answer (by my standards).

Now, maybe in legal/asshole world, a service provider is not obligated to explain to a user in a reasonable fashion how the ToS has been violated (or even discouraged because that would make them liable for some bullshit or another). But in the human world, such neglect is a gross violation of customer service. If you are a potential customer of Digital Ocean, "friendliness" is not the takeaway from how they handled this.

The key issue is the risk of a service provider shutting you down because someone complained about your content. No one, no matter what sort of content they host, wants that risk if they can avoid it. From that perspective, the distinction between "Editorial Control" and "Threat of Account Termination for violation of section 2.8" is most definitely nitpicking.

[1] Note, of course, that we are seeing only one side of the story here. There may be unpublished emails that address my accusations that DO was lazy (although I don't personally believe there are)

That may be true in a court of law. This is not a court of law. Insistence on treating it like one is a great example of why people hate lawyers.

They handled this badly, and they'll pay for it, however small the impact.

Because it's a nice thing to do when you're dealing with private citizens.

We're talking ethics here, and the thing about ethics is that they can essentially be boiled down to "don't be an asshole".

This blog post can seriously hurt someone who never asked for it and doesn't deserve it. Why not be a little bit fair? If you're not sure if it's "off the record", ask. If you can't ask because the party 'muted' you (!!), assume it is 'off the record' - why? Because that's the ethical thing to do.

I look at this author, and all I see is a bully.

It's good that you always have the presence of mind to censor yourself accordingly. Clearly the Googler made a big mistake because he didn't expect somebody to write an entire blog post from some off-the-cuff remarks he made in a chat room.

>Do I think DO should claim editorial control over it?

They don't. They didn't change his blog post. They asked this guy to anonymize his post because it looks like slander and defamation which is against their TOS. That's how I interpret it as well. AND IT'S THE RIGHT THING TO DO!

I think exposing what people say in the open (not private but also not quite public) isn't exactly something someone who works at google should be complaining about. If "stuff you do online can come back to haunt you" shocks you then you probably shouldn't be working at google (except perhaps as a contractor with no benefits, right?)

Whose the other asshole?

I think that's a good word for him. Unfortunately, this is the way many journalists act much of the time - exactly how they create "stories" out of nothing. I guess while playing journalist this guy forgot that the didn't have the resources of a news organization to back him up, and now he has to fend for himself.

So he's hardly fending for himself - he has the backing of all those who support free speech behind him. There are rather many of us.

Also, if your opinion of journalists is that many of them act this way, may I respectively suggest that it would benefit you to upgrade your news sources?

As usual, it's difficult to discuss this when there's no distinction between first-amendment style free speech and the general concept of it and various interim consequences.

A site like Digital Ocean is a general-purpose hosting provider. As a general-purpose provider, their perspective on censorship and free speech is important to anyone who would be a customer of their service. "How are they going apply their ToS?" is a legitimate and important question to any user of their service. Will they be rigorous and fair? Or Will they be biased towards people who complain? Will they be biased towards certain political factions? Will they be biased towards the whims of their executives? When they apply their ToS, what recourse will you have? What is their appeal process like?

In other words, it's a "free speech" issue in the sense of "is Digital Ocean's behavior and policy adequately permissive for the content I want to host?"

This guy clearly crossed a line with the content and tone of his blog post.

How do you 'cross a line' with tone? If I am looking for a hosting provider, I am not looking for one who takes a complaint at face value, then scans my content carelessly trying to get a feel for the 'tone'. I want a specific, incontrovertible infraction that is fair and explained to as precisely as they are able.

Honestly this guy seems like a jerk to me and just from the two posts I've seen I don't like him. But it doesn't matter how I feel, it matters whether he violated the terms of service (both the letter and the spirit).

What does an individual do at a time like this? It seems his solution is to try to rally up people in anger and emotion against DO.